The trees speak louder than the forest.
Especially when they fall.
There is a tree that I can see from the window of my childhood bedroom.
It is the only tree standing in the farmer’s field.
I don’t know why the farmer ever left it standing in the first place. I don’t know if it has a preservation order attached to it. I don’t know how long it’s been there but it is almost certainly the last of what a hundred years ago would have been an impressive woodland.
What I can say is that for 23 years that lonely tree has been a fixture in the view from my childhood bedroom window, and I feel a great affinity towards to it.
It stands vigilant as the seasons come and go, as the people in my life come and go, as the good things in my life come and go, as the bad things in my life come and go.
It stands vigilant in the rain and the heat and the fog.
It stands vigilant in the dead of night and in the brilliant noon sun.
My dad once envisioned hanging a set of four photographs of it on the wall in the house - a series displaying the tree throughout the year as it changes with the seasons. I don’t thing that ever happened, but I don’t think it was needed - I can picture that tree intimately even when I close my eyes.
When I was out walking with my friend James recently as part of our filming along the Essex Way, he stopped many times to - in his own words - ‘have a moment’ with a tree. A cool-looking tree that spoke to him on some kind of spiritual level. He would explore it, speak to it, pat its trunk affectionately, then turn and wish it a good day.
He was channelling what humans have experienced since before we even learned to walk upright - a deep relationship with these complex bioological systems that resonates throughout our history, culture, folklore and mythology. Trees are shelter. Trees are refuge from predators. Trees are life-givers, and homes of ancient spirits that know far more about this land than us mortals ever will.
I’m certain everyone has a relationship like the one I have with the tree in the field. Even if they’re not aware of it, it will be subconscious, subtle, a feeling they might not be able to quite put their finger on. But if that tree were to disappear, that connection would be severed and the feeling would be a horrible lurch of the stomach the same as it feels when you get bad news. The uncomfortable feeling that something significant has vanished from our lives and we didn’t have the chance to say goodbye.
All around the world, people felt a particular connection with a tree in Northumberland that was planted over a century ago.
The sycamore at Sycamore Gap on Hadrian’s Wall was a cultural icon. It drew visitors from across the country and overseas. It featured in people’s wedding proposals, celebrations, and moments of grief. As far as trees go in the public and private consciousness, this sycamore was a cherished celebrity.
In September 2023, two men cut it down in the middle of the night for no reason. They took a wedge as a trophy and left the rest of it where it fell.
The felling - and the despair and rage felt across the country - became international news.
The National Trust’s Andrew Poad was quoted: “We’ve been amazed and inspired by the offers of help and good wishes we’ve received from here in Northumberland, around the UK, and even from overseas. It’s clear that this tree captured the imaginations of so many people who visited, and that it held a special – and often poignant – place in many people’s hearts.”
The subsequent court case was widely publicised on British news. In the prosecution’s eyes, the two men became “public enemy number one” and were remanded in custody “for their own protection”.
On Friday 9th May 2025, they were found guilty of criminal damage. The maximum sentence could be up to ten years in prison. Prosecutors said the pair carried out the "mindless thuggery" as a "bit of a laugh”.
Just a few weeks ago, an ancient oak tree in Whitewebbs Park in North London was felled. The massive tree - of a size that made it one of only 60 in London - was over 500 years old. It was a significant ecosystem of its own, hosting hundreds of species and holding vigil as a cornerstone organism in the wider environment.
The incident prompted a similar response of outrage from the public. A criminal investigation was launched - and it was discovered that the tree had been cut down on the orders of the nearby restaurant Toby Carvery, as they had declared it to be “mostly dead and diseased” and posed a risk to the public.
Enfield council leader Ergin Erbil said this was false. “We have evidence that this tree was alive and starting to grow new spring leaves when this action was taken. Our team of experts checked the tree in December 2024 and found it was healthy and posed no risk to the neighbouring car park and its users,” he said.
Ecologists later said they expected the tree to live for decades more, had it not been felled. But the police dropped the criminal investigation, referring to it as a ‘civil matter’ instead.
This all happened in the looming shadow of a threat from Tottenham Footbal Club to turn the rest of Whitewebbs Park - a thriving ecosystem and vital green space for the community - into a private football training ground. The work would level much of the grassland and ancient woodland, replacing it with astroturf.
Local nature expert and filmmaker Ian Phillips explains it better than I could:
The public outcry and national news coverage of the destruction of these two trees speaks volumes about the cultural importance of nature, and how closely we hold individual elements to our heart. Seeing this conversation about nature so prominently at the top of the news agenda can only be a good thing.
Yet all over the country, all over the world, trees are felled in countless numbers every day and met with silence from the public. Here in the UK, the tediously drawn-out construction of the HS2 train line has resulted in the demolition of a vast amount of precious ancient woodland.
Trees are cleared constantly to make room for new roads, new housing developments, new warehouses, new data centres, every single day. Millions of square kilometres of rainforest around the world are cut and burned every year to make space for the beef industry. These destroy not just habitats for countless species - many of which are driven to extinction before even being discovered - but also the ability for the planet to regulate its climate. If you’re in the UK or the USA it might be easy to think that what happens in the Amazon is something remote and unrelated to your day-to-day life, but the record heatwaves and droughts and wildfires we are all experiencing are tangibly linked to its collapse.
To its credit, Brazilian ambitions to reduce deforestation in the Amazon seem to be working, and rates have been dropping steadily in the last two or three years. But the amounts cleared every year are still vast. And bafflingly, to prepare for the volume of people attending the upcoming international climate conference COP30 hosted in Belém, tens of thousands of acres of protected rainforest were destroyed to make room for a four-lane highway.
Nature, on every level, is deeply integrated into our everyday minds, our lives, our consciousness. Humanity is not separate from nature - it is interconnected in complex ways.
In my opinion, the corporate individuals who authorised the felling of the Whitewebbs oak should be subjected to the same criminal investigation as those who felled the Sycamore Gap sycamore. The outpourings of grief and anger that stem from the loss of just two precious trees are both tragic and joyous to see. They also prove that we as a species have not entirely severed our cultural connection with the rest of the Earth. At least not yet. So how can we expand our sights beyond individual organisms to consider nature as a whole?
Many, many, people around the world express deep anguish and despair at the harm done to nature by individuals and financial systems that will only ever lead to humanity’s self-extinction. If you are reading this, you are probably one of them. But many people still blithely go about their daily lives ignoring the grasslands turned into concrete, the woodlands replaced by unaffordable housing developments, the oceans dragged to oblivion.
Perhaps it’s easier to pretend it isn’t happening than it is to face up to the reality of the change that is required.
But change is required. And it will only come when we look around.
You can read more about Whitewebbs Park and how to protect it here.
The Woodland Trust is doing great work championing Britain’s woodlands. Give them a hand.
Here’s what you can do to help protect rainforests.
It feels like we’re sometimes so disconnected. Not only from nature, but the whole real world.